View of Treading Water in Neurth's Ship: Quine, Davidson, Rorty

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TREADING WATER IN NEURATHS SHIP:

QUINE, DAVIDSON, RORTY

CHRISTOPHER NORRIS Univeristy of Wales, Cardiff

ABSTRACT

This article examines what I take to be some of the wrong turns and false dzlemmas that analyttc philosophy lias run into since Quine' s well-known attack on the two `last dogmas' of old style Logical Empznasm In particular it traces the consequences of Quine's argument for a thoroughly naturalized epistemology, one that would vtew philosophy of science as 'ali the philosophy we need', and that defines `philosophy of science' in narrowly physicalist terms I contend that this amounts to a thzrd residual dogma of empincism and that its effect lias been chiefly to re- strtct the range of post-Quinean debate by setting an agenda which preemptzvely excludes ali interest in the wider (i e, cruz.- cal and normative) climensions of philosophic enquzry Its znflu- ence can be seen In vartous responses co Qutne, among citem those of Donald Davidson and Rzchard Rorty, both of whom adopt a similar, reductively physicalzst approach co zssues of meaning, knowledge and truth Where Davidson takes issue with other Quznean doctnnes such as framework-relativism and radical meantng varzance, Rorty pushes those doctnnes right through to a wholesale relativist (or `textualise) position ac cording to which interpretation is completely unconstramed by the mere face of a causal 'correspondence' between beliefs and real ity What they both share — and what thus lays Davicison open to a revisionist reading zn Rorty's favoured style — is this Quine-derived notion that beliefs can be explained in terms of a reflex stzmulus response psychology that finds no loom for nor mative zssues of epistemological warrant or justification For it will then seem plauszble for Rorty to claim that any 'beliefs' Principia, 2(2) (1998) pp 227-79 Published by Editora da UFSC, and NEL — Epistemology and Logic Research Group, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil

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228 Chi istopher Norris

acquired by such a rudimentary mechantsm are com patible with pretty much any higher-level theory or description that one cares to place upon them My ande goes on to criticize Rorty's most extreme statement of the case — zn kis essay Texts and Lumps'

— and (more constructively) to suggest some ways forward from this post empirmist predtcament

1. Quine: reductwe ph.ysicalism.

For Quine, famously, philosophy of science is ali the philosophy we need What he means by `philosophy of science' is basically a strong reducttonist programme for sheddtng ali that surplus metaphysical baggage that went along with previous approaches to issues of knowledge and truth 1 Epistemology can be naturalized — rendered properly scientific — by cutting out vague mentalist talk of `ideas',

`behefs', `concepts', `meanings', `propositional attrtudes', etc , and replacing rt with hard-headed physicalist talk of assenting or dissenting dispositions `Nly position is a naturalistic one', he writes That is to say

I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for saence, but as contmuous with saence 1 see pluiosophy and saence as in the same boat — a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure , we can rebuild only at sea while staymg afloat in rt There is no externai vantage potnt, no first plulosophy 2

Epistemology must therefore take a lead from behavioral pyschology which in turn takes its methods and investiga- tive hearings from the natural saences Of course episte- mologists have typically supposed themselves to deal in issues of knowledge and truth beyond any such merely psy- chological or naturalistic methods of enquiry For Quine, however, this is just an old-style delusion of philosophic grandeur which should henceforth be abandoned along

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Treadzng Water in Neurath's Rip ²²⁹ with the residual 'dogmas' (i e, the hngenng metaphysical commaments) of logical empincism 3

Philosophy of language falis mto ume by likewtse rejecting all mentalist predicates, eschewing any notion of privileged access to meanings or intentions, and adopting a stimulus-response theory of verbal behaviour This despae the problems that anse from Quine's equally well-known thesis of ontological relativity, i e, his case that there is room for doubt with regard to even the most apparently straightforward itens of verbal behaviour, as for instance when the native informant points toward a rabba and pronounces the word `Gavagal y 4 There is an interesting passage from Word and Object where Quine actually links this problem about the indeterminacy of translanon with Brentano's thesis concerning the irreduabilay of inten- tonal idioms One may accept that thesis, he wraes, `either as showing the indispensabilay of intentional whoms and the importance of an autonomous suence of intention or as showing the baselessness of intentional idioms and the emptiness of the scence of intention My attaude, unlike Brentano's, is the second' 5 In this respect Quine follows the dominant lime among Anglo-Amencan analytic philosphers for whom the issue was pretty much settled when Frege took Brentano's student Husserl to task for allowing his logic to be contaminated by elements of so-called 'psychologism' 6 On this view there is no genuine distinc- non — least of ali a transcendentally valid distinction such as Husserl sought to uphold — between matters of empai- cal psychology and matters of apodicnc warrant 7

Sun there is the question as to whether this charge was justified or whether Husserl's logical researches might pos- sess a daim to genume analytic ngour, despae being couched in the intentionalist ichom foresworn by Frege's heas and disoples 8 Just recently some analytical philoso-

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230 Christopher N orns

phers, Michael Dummett among them, have suggested that perhaps the lines of demarcation are not so clearly drawn, even if — as In Dummett's qualifted revisionist account — rt is most often Frege (not Husserl) who predictably has the last word in matters of logical truth and accountabilay Moreover, this leads on to the issue of just how far — and with what philosophical warrant — one can rule out intentional (or intensional) predicates and contexts in seeking to exphcate the structure and content of truth For there is, I shall argue, a case to be made that the self-denying orch- nance of Quinean physicalism is such as to foreclose any adequate account of what is involved in even the most basic fornis of perceptual, cognitive, epistemic, and linguistic- communicative grasp That is to say, intentionality is indeed `irreducible' in the sense that Bretano (and Husserl atter him) mamtamed, rather than — as Quine would have a — just a remnant of our old psychologistic or pre- scientific modes of thought On the contrary Qutne's reductionist physicalism is just what leads to such hypertn- duced problems as that of 'radical translation' between chf- ferent conceptual schemes or of deciding just which among the range of possible objects (rabba 7 spatio-temporal rabbit- slice? undetached rabba-part 7) corresponds to some item of observed linguistic behaviour In short, this approach makes no allowance for two main sources of shared and communicable knowledge Thus (1) such knowledge pre- supposes the existence of a real-world ob j ect domam con- taining manifold distinctive items along with their charac- tenstic attnbutes, property clusters, natural-kind resem- blances, causal dispositions, genotypal features, molecular or subatomic structures, etc And (2) we are able to Iden- tity those objects reliably enough — at least in the majoray of cases — through a process of ongoing causal interaction with them an.d also through the further understanding that

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Treading Water irl. Neurath's Ship 231

is typically acquired in vanous (everyday or specialized) contexts of enquiry 10

With respect to (1) Quine regards such clamas as accept- able on pragmanst grounds — i e, in so far as they play some role in our present-best sciennfic theones — but sees no reason (convenience aside) for supposing them to cap- ture anything more in the way of reahty or truth With respect to (2) he acknowledges the causal component in behef-acquisition but treats it in purely physicalist terms — as a matter of reflex responses to incoming sumula — and thereby effecnvely blocks the appeal to those deeper knowledge-constitutive features that emerge in our ongoing epistemic commerce with the world Moreover, Quine has little choice but to adopt this approach given both his stnct veto on `intentionahse talk (which would apply to any save a fully naturalized or hardhne physicahst epistemology), and of course his doctnne of wholesale ontological relativity (whtch rules out the prospect of our ever getting things right except with reference to the scheme-relative critena of thinghood and nghtness that happen to obtatn within our own present-day scientific culture) Thus '[o]ar talk of externai things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and control the tngger- ing of our sensory receptors in the hght of previous tng- gerings of our sensory receptors' 11 However — as I have argued at length elsewhere — this offers no adequate means of addressing those well-known problems (of ontological relativity, the nature of scientific paradigm-shifts, the underdetermination of theory by evidence, or the theory- laden character of observation-statements) that anse in consequence of Quine's physicalist-behavionst approach 12 That is to say, he pushes so far with the case for a naturalized epistemology that it leaves no room for any treatment of issues that must surely be central to philosophy of sci-

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232 Christopher ^NOTTIS

ence and — no less — to related work in philosophy of mind and language These include the basic question as to just how far — and on what rational grounds — we can claim to understand other people's meanings and intentions, or can make sense of scientific worldviews (paradigms, theories, conceptual schemes etc ) other than our own

On Qume's account we have no chotce in the matter since a behavionst approach is the only viable option once we have taken his point about the perfis in store for any- one who rashly has recourse to intentional or other such

`mentalise idioms and predicates Thus Iwie depend strictly on overt behavior As long as our command of language fas ali externai checkpoints, where our utterance or our reaction to someone's utterance can be appraised In the light of some shared situation, so long ali is well' 13 But if this were the case then we could never make a start in con- struing other people's utterances, In understanding what led them to adopt (or to reject) some particular item of belief, or again — as concerns philosophy and history of science — in reconstructing the various interrelated thought- processes (theoretical, observational, hypothetico- deductive, etc ) which produced some particular paradigm- change For, in Quine's view, these are just the sorts of issue that we should have left belund -with the passage to a naturalized epistemology, one that is 'continuous with science' in the sense of rejecting ali normative constraints on the conduct of enquiry other than those with a direct grounding in the methods of behavioral (stimulus-response) psychology

In philosophy of logic also Quine puts the case that we need nothing more than the quantified first-order predicate calculus jorned to a strictly extensionalist semanttcs In short 'Mo be is to be the value of a variable There are no

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Trearling Water ui Neurath's Ship 233

ultimate philosophical problems concernmg terms and their reference, but only concerning vanables and their values, and there are no ultimate philosophical problems concernng existence except msofar as existence is expressed by the quannfier (3x) 14 For we shall otherwise run into ali sorts of trouble with the axiom of substitutability salva yen- tate for referentially synonymous terms in `opaque' or belief-related contexts, that is to say, with the fact that there is no necessary truth-functional equivalence between pairs of sentences such as 'Mary believes that acero denounced Canline' and 'Mary believes that Tully denounced Catiline' ('acero' and `Tully' being different designations for the selfsame historical person) ' This problem crops up if she should happen to not know that both names have an iden- tical referent, so that one sentence is a true description of what Mary believes while the other is either false or lackmg in any determmate truth-value In which case, he advises, we had much better avoid these intentionalist/ intension- alist quagmires and stick to the austere Quinean regimen as descnbed above

There is a similar objection — Quine maintams — to the idea of quantifying into modal contexts, or supposmg (in company with philosophers like Knpke) that truth-values range over vanous áternative possible `worlds', some of them logically compossible with ours and varymg only In respect of connngent details, while others involve a more radical departure with regard to matters of necessary truth In the world we actually inhabat 16 I have no room here for a detailed discussion of the far-reaching consequences that Knpke derives from this modalized theory of naming and necessity Sufficient to say that Quine views them as a source of yet further `metaphysical' bewilderment which can best be got over by returning to the firm ground of first-order quantified predicate logic, extensionalist sernan-

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234 Chrtstopher Norris

tics, and a straightforward physicalist ontology 1' For a can always transpire on Kripke's account, despite bis talk of

`rigicl' reference-fixing, that what ought to be synonymous (extensionally equivalent) terms acquire different criteria of valid application when translated from one such `world' to another They thus become °pague or resistant to logical analysis in much the same way as those other problem cases that involve various mind-states, beliefs, meanings, ascriptions of utterer's intent, and so forth Moreover this appltes to any programm.e of epistemological enqutry that forsakes the narrow Quinean path and raises questions about knowledge or truth bevond the strict extensionalist rema

Nevertheless Quine's physicalism goes along with a doctrine of ontological relativay which appears to undercut any support a might offer for real-1st arguments in philosophy of science On this view — as enounced in `Two Dog- mas of Empiricism' — there exist as many objects (putative realia) as there exist variant ontologies or conceptual schemes for picking them out in accordance with prevalent notions of realay and truth Thus, ultimately speakmg, there is no difference — in point of ontological status — between brick houses on Elm Street, numbers, mathemati- cal classes, centaurs, and Homer's gods 18 This is not to say that we should go the whole hog with cultural relativists and consider them ali equally entaled to endorsement from a present-day informed scientific viewpomt For a is Quine's opinion — speakmg `qua lay physicist' — that the houses and numbers have a strong ela= to rationally warranted behef, as compared with the gods, centaurs, and suchhke (tu bis view) mythic or nonexistent entales Still this preference can only be a matter of what counts for us as 'rational' and `warranted', that is say, whatever has a role in our currently most favoured ontological scheme

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Treading Water ta Neurath's Ship 235 Thus

[p]hysical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convement intermedianes — not by definition terms of expenence, but simply as irreduable posits com- parable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer Moreo- ver, the abstract entales which are the substance of mathematics — ultunatelv classes and classes of classes and so on up — are another posit in the same spint Episte- mologically these are myths on the same footing with physical objects and gods, neither better nor worse except in the degree to which they expedite our deahngs with sense expenences 19

So the end-result of Quine's intransigent physicalism and bis vigorous stroppmg of Occam's Razor is to leave us mately bereft of any means for distinguishing real from (say) fictive, imagmary, hypothencal, or non-existent jects Rather, we can and do make such distinctions readily enough, but only from within a given ontology or conceptual scheme which itself sets the terms for whatever counts as 'real' by our present best cultural, commonsense, or scientific lights

This is — to say the least — an ironic upshot if set alongside Quine's vigorous rejecnon of Brentano's thesis concernmg the indispensability of intentional iclioms For one of his chief obj ections to that thesis, like Russell's be- fore him, is that rt leads to a massively mflated ontology replete with ali manner of `intentional objects' which should hax,e no place in a physicalist (saence-led) world- view Yet it is just this narrowly physicalist concepnon which leads him to place the whole range of above- mentioned items — bnck houses, numbers, classes, centaurs, the gods of Homer — on the same epistemological foonng, that is to say, as `myths', 'posits' or `converlient intermedianes' imported in order to `expedite our dealmgs

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236 Chnstopher Norns

with sense expenences' Of course it might be said that the gods and centaurs — unlike the numbers and classes — are scarcely the sorts of thing that can be thought to render any such service in helping us to make better (sciennfically respectable) sense of our commerce with physical reality But this is just as surely to miss Quine's point namely that

`reality' is always in the end what we make of it according to some given ontological scheme or some existing

`canonical notation' for assigning values to vanables

At times Quine desenhes this programme in a way that makes it sound perfectly compatible with the sturdiest form of epistemological realism Thus Elle quest of a simplest, clearest overall pattern of canonical notanon is not to be distinguished from a quest for uh-mate categones, a limn- ing of the most general traits of reality' 20 And again le]ntification begins begins at arm's length, the points of condensation in the primordial conceptual scheme are things glimpsed, not glimpses' However these passages and others like them must be taken in con j unction with his statements elsewhere concerning the scheme-relative or pragmancally negonable character of ali such claims For it is a cunous feature of Quine's physicalism that it exerts so little constraint upon the range of itens that he is willing to admit — In principie at least — as candidates for 'entification'

The main reason, I would suggest, is that Quine is himself sun In the gnp of at least one dogma that charactenzed old-style logical empincism This is the belief — gotng back to Locke and Hume — that there exist certain ulnmate problems confronting anv realist or causal-explanatory approach to issues in epistemology and philosophy of science Hence his well-nigh heroic attempt to maintain a hardline physicalist or 'scientific' outlook while making such large concessions to the case for ontological relativity, ineaning-

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Treading Water in Neurath's Ship 237

vanance, underdetermination of theories by evidence, the theory-laden character of observation-statements, and so forth On Quine's argument there is simply no route — other than the pragmatist une of least resistance — from the basic observation-data or physical `stimuli' to the theory that best accounts for those data or which provides the most adequate causal-explanatory framework Rather, theories and observation-statements are always sub ject to revision under pressure from conflicts or anomalies at this or that point in the total `fabric' of currently accrechted beliefs Thus it follows from Quine's combination of reductive physicalism and meaning-holism that there cannot be anything in the nature of dungs — or in the grounds of our knowledge concerning them — that could warrant our as- serting some particular claim with respect to some particular (non-scheme-relative) item of physical reality

This is where the doctrtne of ontological relativay strikes against any kind of realist theorv concerning — say

— the constituents of matter, their subatomic structures, molecular compositions, chemical valencies, causal dispositions, emergent biological properties, etc It is physicalist just in so far as it takes sense-data (or unmediated 'sumule) as our sole means of access to the physical world Other- wise it finds no room for any further epistemological grounds of appeal save — in holistic terms — to the no- tonal `entirety' of saence as a ui-tu-nate framework wherein those data are accommodated through a process of ongoing revision or pragmatic adjustment What drops out completely on this Quinean account is the concept of epistemology as a discipline aimed toward providing a normative and justificatory treatment of seentific knowledge or of the various procedures of thought — evidential reasoning, theory-construction, and inference to the best explanation — that characterize scientific enquiry For of course it is pre-

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238 Chnstopher Nono asely Quine's ambaion to naturalize epistemology by purgmg it of ali such intentional or `mentalise residues Thus lolur acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principie to our acceptance of a scientific theory , we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme alto which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fated and arranged' 2' But in that case — it might be asked — what should count as a

`reasonable' way of assessing the results given that this whole process is somehow thought to transpire In the epistemologically vacuous space between sensory inputs (physical stimuli) and overall, pragmatically adjusted 'conceptual scheme' ? Then again how is a — lacking such epistemological resources — that the `disordered fragments of raw experience' can be somehow transformed into a

`scientific theory' (along with as attendant ontology) capa- ble of meeting the basic criteria of scope, specifiaty, empai- cal 'fie, conceptual-explanatory grasp, and so forth?

Quine's theory provides no answer to these questions, premised as it is on a reductive physicalist account of knowledge-acquisition that excludes them from the rema of a properly scientific (i e, naturaltzed) approach Epistemology is best looked upon', Quine suggests, 'as an enterprise within natural scence Cartesian doubt is not the way to begin Retaming our present behefs about nature, we can still ask how we have arrived at them ' 23 How- ever this passage also raises more problems than a can possibly resolve For one thmg a sets up the debate in a thoroughly skewed and unrepresentative way, as if the method of `Cartesian doubt' — and as supposed issue in certain in- dubitable truths of reason — were the sole alternative to Quine's programme for a thoroughly naturahzed epistemology But this is to ignore the entre history of post- Cartesian arguments — from Kant to Husserl and beyond

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Treading Water in Neurath's Ship 239

— against such narrowly foundationalist ideas of the soli- tary cogito (or first-person knowing subject) as ultimate source and guarantee of knowledge At very least it may be held, contra Quine's argument, that epistemology in the other (broadly speaking 'continental') une of descent has produced some far more sophisticated analyses of the rela- non between sensory-perceptual experience and the various forms and modalities of conceptual understanding 24 Also it signally fails to expiam what is involved in that naturahstic account whereby, as Quine says, 'retaining our present beliefs about nature, we can still ask how we have arrived at thern' For on the physicalist acount such a story would lack any kind of normative dimension, amounting to a kin.d of natural history of the various beliefs (or disposi- tional states) brought about by direct exposure to incoming physical stimuli This is a causal-explanatory theory only in the crudest, most reductionist sense that it 'explains' what we know (or think we know) by reference to our history of behavioral interactions with objects in the physical world whose nature, structure, defirung attributes, causal capaci- ties, etc , are quite beyond reach of any deeper explanation in the causal-realist mode

In short, Quine's behavionsm goes along with his atti- tude of deep-grained Humean scepticism regarding causal explanations, his aversion to `intentionalise talk In whatever (semantic or epistemological) guise, and his twin theses of meaning-holism and ontological relativity For these doctrinal commitments ali have their source — as I have argued above — In Quine's hardhne physicalist approach to matters of meaning, knowledge, and truth 'Meaning' becomes just an otiose term, one that can be happily dis- pensed with once we take the behaviorist point 'Knowledge' becomes just a matter of pragmatic adjustment to the incoming `barrage' of sensory stimuli plus whatever

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240 Christopher Norris

is needed in the way of theories and (so-called) logical laws of thought', themselves always open to revision under pressure from recalcarant `evidence' And `truth' becomes a concept entirely devoid of normative or justificatory force since, on this view, a is merely the name that attaches to whatever fas in with the rest of our behefs or current (pragmatically adjusted) ontological commaments Thus, despae Quine's avowals of sturdy commonsense reahsm with regard to the physical sciences, his outlook is thoroughly anti-realist in the sense that it denies the very pos- sibility of verification-transcendent truths Moreover, unlike Dummett and others who have propounded anti- reahsm as a technical doctrine In philosophy of language and logic, Quine hnks this argument up with a pragmatist conception of enquiry according to which — in principie at least — there is nothing (right down to the so-called logical

`laws of thought') that might not conceivably have to be revised In response to some recalcarant `expenence' or other 25 In short, Quine's programme is one that would ef- fectively spell an end to the entire enterprise of normative epistemology and philosophy of science

2.

Davidson an.d Rorty

Similar problems can be seen to arise with philosphers who have taken a lead from Quine's thinking but have sought to avoid as more awkward implications Thus, for instance, Donald Davidson professes the same kind of bluff, no-nonsense physicalism with regard to behefs and the real-world objects or events that purportedly cause those behefs, while also rejecting the idea that knowledge might involve anythmg more — epistemologically speaking — than the right kind of causal relation between them 'In giving up the dualism of scheme and world', he wraes, `we

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Treadmg Water In Neurath's Slup 241

do not give up the world, but reestabhsh unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose anncs make our sentences and opinions true or false '26 The dualism in question is of course Quine's idea of the various frameworks (or conceptual schemes) which are somehow imposed upon the raw data of our sensory promptings, an idea which — accordin.g to Davidson — constitutes the third and perhaps last 'dogma' of empinasm If Quine had only pushed the argument one stage further and given up this idea also then he wouldn't have created ali the well-known problems about framework-relativism and radical rneaning-vanance

Still a is hard to see how those problems could ever be resolved by adopting Davidson's direct realist approach, that Is to say, his breezy assurance that there exists an

`unmediated' causal link between objects or events in the world and the content (as well as the truth-value) of our vanous `sentences and opinions' For this approach rules out a whole range of salient epistemological dist-met-10ns, among them the difference between perceptual knowledge- by-acquaintance and knowledge arnved at by other, more complex or elaborate inferential means It is also 111- equipped to cope with the sorts of difficulty that were first pointed out by Plato in the Theaetetus and which have lately been developed to a high point of subtlety by Ed- mund Gemer and others 27 These have to do with the quesnon whether 'knowledge' is synymous with `justified true beher, or whether there are cases — ingenious counter- examples of the type devized by Gemer — where this Iden- tity falis Thus one may hold a behef that is both true (as rt happens) and j ustified (according to one's best current knowledge) but where the grounds one adduces for maintaining that behef are In fact unrelated to as truth- conditions as revealed through a more adequate grasp of the relevant facts This problem is most often raised in the

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242 Chnstopher Norns

context of descriptivist theones of meaning and reference, such that the most promising solution seems to involve something more In the way of a direct causal linkage On this alternative Creliabihse account, knowledge can indeed be equated with justified true belief just so long as the justi- fying grounds include some reference to the objects, events, arcumstances, etc , which caused that state of mind in the believer and which allowed them to draw the appropnate conclusion ²⁸

Nevertheless, there are senous problems with the causal theory if it is thought of as providing a full-fledged alterna- tive to the descriptivist model, rather than a means of re- fining that model and closing gaps in the standard account For if beliefs are justified solely in terms of their having been caused in an appropiate way — as with David- son's idea of those 'familiar objects' whose 'antics make our sentences and opinions true or false' — then truth is just a matter of displaying or eliating the right response to the nght kind of stimulus in the nght physical environment However this approach is plainly inadequate to account for other, more complex processes of knowledge-acquisition such as those that occur whenever it is a matter of deciding between alternative truth-claims, adjusting theones or predictions in the light of new evidence, or reinterpreting that evidence so as to conserve some particularly powerful or otherwise well-supported theory In this respect Davidson is no better placed than Quine to expiam what distinguishes genuine knowledge from true beliefs acadentally arnved at through a reflex process of causal triggering devoid of rational warrant or adequate justification Of course David- son differs with Quine on certain points, among them the latter's great mistake — In Davidson's view — of retaining a version of the scheme/content dualism, thus opening the way to ali sorts of unnecessary problem 29 But Davidson is

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Treading Wctter tn N eurath' s Shit, 243

himself just as prone to veer across from the basic physicalist doctrine — that true beliefs are caused by direct stimulation of our nerve-ends, sensory receptors, optical cortex, or whatever — to a holistic doctrine of meaning and truth where equilibrium can always be achieved by making suitable adjustments here and there in the overall fabric of behefs

This is why, as Davidson. nonchalantly puts it, `truth of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be' 30 'Objective', that is, in so far as language is thought of as comprising a collection of (actual or possible)

`sentences' whose truth-conditions are given directly by the role they occupy in the snmulus-response repertoire of this or that speaker in this or that phvsically specifted context of utterance However, there is not much left of this pur- ported 'objectivity' if it is always construed as 'relative to language', and if by 'language' is meant the entire range of those sentences (or belief-dispositions) that characterize a speaker — or community of speakers — at any given time For in that case the way is wide open for a relativist (or a Rorty-type pragmatist) to argue that any `objectivity' thereby secured is 'relative to language' in the full-blown sense of being wholly a product of the vanous rneanings, construais, or interpretations that they happen to place upon it

Indeed this is just Rorty's point in his essay `Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth' where he tries to coax Davidson back into the pragmatist fold by drawing out these tensions in his argument 31 Thus Rorty quotes a passage from David- son's essay 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge' which appears to take the strongest possible une on ob jec- tivity and truth as causal products of our direct encounter with objects and events in the physical world 'What stands in the way of global scepticism of the senses', Davidson

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244 Christopher Norns wrrtes,

is the fact that we must, ia the plamest and methodol- ogically most basic cases, take the objects of a behef to be the causes of that behef And what we, as mterpreters, must take them to be is what ia fact they are Commumca- non begms where causes converge your utterance means what mine does if behef in rts truth is systemancally caused by the same events and objects ³²

But Rorty can then make the relativist case (at least to his own satisfaction) that this argument places no limas — other than pragmatic, communal, or localized culture- relative con.straints — on the range of possible interpretations to which ali utterances are subject provided only that the sceptic is rebutted by the fact of such causal

`convergence' After ali,

this is just what the pragmatist has been telling the sceptic ali the time Both the pragmatist and David- son are saying that if `correspondence' denotes a rela- non between beliefs and the world which can vary though nothmg else vanes — even if the causal rela- tions remam the same — then `corresponds' cannot be an explanatory term 33

Thus Davidson really has no need to worry about issues of truth, objectivity, and right mterpretation, despite his con- tinuing to fret about these issues, not least in response to Rorty's claim that he (Davidson) is a pragmanst at heart and shouldn't be prey to such needless anxieties For if the causal theory is enough to secure basic commurucative up- take — or (ia philosophy-of-science terms) the basic possi- bility of trans-paradigm understanding — then no more is required ia order to keep the cultural conversation going On the other hand this theory is so very basic that ^{It IM-}

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Treading W ater In Neurath's Slup 245

poses few (if any) ultimate constramts upon the various wavs the conversation may go while still keeping ali parties suffiaently in touch with each other That is to say, a gives us pretty much carte blanche to renterpret meanings, re- place old behefs, revise saentific theories, reconfigure those various `metaphors we live by', and constantly re-weave the fabric of belief according to present needs and purposes 34 For the causal (reductive-physicalist) theory of meaning, knowledge, and belief-fixation is rtself speafied In just such terms as to guarantee only the barest necessities of shared cognitive grasp, and hence to afford the widest possible scope for creative 'redescription' In Rorty's favoured style

The same trick can just as easily be pulled, as Rorty shows, wah Quine's version of naturalized epistemology, or his da= that philosophy of saence is ultimately 'ali the philosophy we need' On this view the language of the physical saences `limns the true and ultimate structure of reality' to the best of our current understanding It thus leaves no room for epistemology as traditionally conceived, that is to say, for conceptions of knowledge and truth that involve some reference to mmds, meanings, concepts, beliefs, or other such `opaque' entales, and which therefore cannot be cashed out in purely extensional or physicalist terms Rorty takes issue with Quine about this — as might be expected — and also with regard to his further daim that 'the unit of empirical inquiry is the whole of saence', rather than particular statements, predictions or theories tested against particular (well-defmed) items of empirical evidence 35 But the reason for Rorty's disagreement with Quine is not that this approach would undermine the very project of scientific enquiry by allowmg truth-values to be redistributed In whichever way caused least upset to existing habits of thought Rather, he objects that Quine has stopped short in talking about 'the whole of saence),

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246 Chnstopher Noms

whereas he should have pushed right through with the argument and relativized truth to 'the whole of culture', or the ennre going range of communal beliefs, with no special pnvilege attaching to the physical scien.ces Thus 'Quine, and many other holists, persisted in the behef that the saence-nonscience distinction somehow cuts nature at a philosophically significant pine 3' Much better had they simply let that distinction go, along with the tw o (ar however many) last dogmas of empincism For they could still hang onto the basic physicalist assurance that our behefs are rehably m touch with the world, or with the vanous objects whose 'familiar arrues' (In Davidson's phrase) render those beliefs true or false But they would also have the freedom to 'redesenhe' that world In a great vanety of ways smce the physical data — or sensory promptings — are themselves under no particular descnpnon and hence inca- pable of fixing the terms or deading the language that best (most accurately) represents them

Thus one might think the language of present-day parti- de physics self-evidently best equipped for picking out just the sorts of entity — subatomic particles — that physicists spend so much of their time trymg to detect or desenhe But this is a purely circular argument, Rorty maintams, smce the onlv way of picking out the entales in questton is by using some language (or descnptive scheme) that gives them a phce In rts range of putative realia 'Normal' science is what goes on when scientists stick to conventional habits of talk and take it that their vanous descnptive schemes are not just preferential ways of interpreting the data but can actually `cut nature at the joints', or offer some truthful (epistemically privileged) account of how things stand in reality `Revolutionary' saence, on the other hand, is what occurs when people cease to abide by the standard rules of the game and decide that there is probably more to be

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Treading Water ui Neurath's Slup 247

gamed by crossing disciplines, ming metaphors, or refusing to accept conventional ideas as to which sorts of language best `correspond' to which sorts of notional entay 37 Thus there is no reason `in the nature of thmgs' why parti- de physicists shouldn't make a breakthrough — or at any rate move the conversation along — by pickmg up ideas from literary craics, or literary critics from particle physicists, or either party from any other discipline (so far as that term still applies) where there happen to be novel or intrigumg developments afoot

Such a notion will only seem absurd to those other,

`Inetaphysical' realist types who want something more than the basic Quinean assurance that our beliefs are causally in touch with the world simply in virtue of our physical con- staution as creatures hard-wired to respond in certain ways to incoming sensory stimuli Most often this involves an appeal to the nature (or 'essence) of the objects that science investigates — subatomic configurations, molecular structures, chemical attributes, DNA protems, etc — along with a kindred division of labour among the different sciences concerned Thus the realist's idea that the world comes pre- packaged (so to speak) into natural kinds finds as counter- part belief in the idea of knowledge as orgamsed into various fields of special expertise corresponding to their various distinctive obj ects of enquiry In other words a harks back to that old Platonic metaphor of knowledge as somehow

`cutting nature at the j oints', or delving beneath surface appearances so as to get at the true, underlying structure of realay However, Rorty argues, we can easily dispense with such outworn realist notions if we just follow Quine's and Davidson's lead toward a naturalized (physicalist) epistemology, and accept that there is nothing more to be had in the way of `correspondence', deep further facts, justificatory grounds, and so forth We can then start gettmg used to

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248 Christopher ^NOMS the idea that there is no lima In principie — as opposed to short-term pragmatic or cultural constraints — on the range of new descriptions which might be applied to this or that physical datum For if there is one thing that recent (post-Kuhnian) philosophy of science has taught us it is the fact that scientific revolutions come about through just such a strong-revisionist break with normalized habits of descripttve or dasstficatory thought

&dl the realist might come back with an argument that appears to concede both main points of Rorty's case — the physicalism and the strong revisionism — but which strengthens the former by giving it a greater degree of causal-explanatory force, and thus cuts down the range of descriptions that can daim genuine scientific warrant As Rorty preemptively puts it

[w]hen Gahleo saw the moons of Juptter through his tele- scope, it might be said, the Impact on his retina was `hard' in the relevant sense, even though its consequences were, to be sure, different for different commumnes The astronomers of Padua took it as merely one more anomaly which had somehow to be worked into a more or less Aris- totehan cosmology, whereas Gahleo's admirers took it as shattermg the crystalline spheres once and for ali But the datum aself, rt might be argued, is utterly real quite apart from the interpretation it receives ³⁸

Now there is no obvious reason for Rorty to reject this lime of approach, given that it seems to square quite well with his own (Quine- and Davidson-derived) outlook of base- tine physicalism plus a wide latitude of choice in interpre- tive matters However he does take issue with it in so far as it involves a sharp dichotomy between 'data' and 'interpretation', whereas — to Rorty's way of thinking — any data adduced by Galileo or the Padua astronomers were already products of their differing worldviews, theories, or

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Treachng Water in Neurath's Ship 249

conceptual schemes, and could therefore provide no neu- tral ground for deciding the issue between them What the Rorty-style pragmatist should therefore do when con- fronted with such arguments is stick to the basic physicalist line but also make it dear that nothing follows as regards the more substantive issue Thus

he agrees that there is such a thmg as brute physical rens- tance — the pressure of hght waves on Gahleo's eyeball, or of the stone on Dr Johnson's boot But he sees no way of transferring this nonhnguistic brutahty to facts, to the truth of sentences As Donald Davidson says, causation is not under a description, but explanation is Facts are hybrid entrties, that is, the causes of the assertibility of sentences indude both physical stimuli and our antecedent choice of response to such stimuh To say that we must have respect for facts is just to say that we must, if we are to play a certain language game, play by the rules To say that we must have respect for unmediated causal forces is pointless It is like saymg that the blank must have respect for the Impressed che lhe blank has no choice, nor do we

I have quoted this passage at length because it shows very clearly how the Quine-Davidson project of a 'naturalized' epistemology can be taken on board by a strong- descriptivist hke Rortv and then turned around to undermine the very programme that led to its adoption in the first place 'This is partly a result of the inherent ambiguity of phenomenalist terms — such as 'data' — which on one interpretation refer to what is given as a matter of `hard' self-evidence, and on another lie open to relativist construais of the sort descnbed above I have wntten elsewhere about the problems created by the use of such strategically double-edged terms by vanous `post-empincise thinkers, among them Quine and Thomas Kuhn 4° But the main

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250 ChriStoPher NOrTIS

point here is Rorty's distinction — with reference to David- son — between matters of real-world (de re) causality and matters of de dicto causal explanation which necessanly per- tain to some particular 'language-game' (e g, those of parti- de physics or molecular biology) and which therefore involve some particular choice among the many such games available For it is only by decreeing a radical split between bare, unaccommodated sense-data and whatever interpreta- non is placed upon them that Rorty can bring off his standard tnck of relativizing truth to what counts as such among the members of this or that ('normal' or

`revolutionary) scientific community

Hence Rorty's cunous claim (in the above-cited passage) that 'the causes of the assernbility of sentences include both physical stimuli and our antecedent choice of response to such stimuli' It is hard to make sense of this claim if one takes rt (pace Nietzsche) that causes by very definition precede effects, and hence that any `choice' in the matter of interpreting — or respondmg to — causal stimuli will necessanly not be `antecedent' in the sense that Rorty apparently requires Where the confusion comes In, as so often, is with the use of a phenomenalist (or sense- datum) terminology which tends to be ambiguous as between (I) the notion of raw sensorv inputs prior to any perceptual or cogninve processing, and (2) data that have already been through such processing, and can thus be thought of as `theory-laden' at least at some basic level This confusion was rife in the language of the logical posi- tivists and their logical-empincist successors It is what al- lows Quine to maintain Ris hardline physicalist approach in epistemological matters while espousing a doctnne of- ontological relativity with regard to even the most basic 'posas' of the physical sciences With Kuhn, it takes the form of a constant equivocating play on the sense of van-

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Treadzng Water In Neurath's Shit) 251

ous kindred terms (`stimull', 'data', `sensations',

`perceptions', `observations', etc ) whose effect is once again to ease the passage from a highly reductive behavionst epistemology to the notion that scientists on eaher side of a major paradigm-change quite literally 'live In different worlds' 41 In Davidson's case, as we have seen, the argument works out rather differently smce he wants to undermine such relativist talk by showing a to rest on a dubious appeal to the `third dogma' of logical empincism, i e, the scheme/content distinction In as vanous residual forms But here again there is a striking failure to expiam how behefs acquired in the way that Davidson desenhes — through causal interaction with the world on the part of sentient creatures — can yield any means of assessing such beliefs in terms of their truth, their evidennal warrant, the extent of their agreement (or disagreement) with currently prevailing scientific ideas, etc For on this account knowledge (or vendical belief) just is the product of that causal interaction construed in a suaably holistic manner, that is to say, as involving not a one-for-one match between particular `stimulf and particular iteras of behef but rather as an ongoing process of adjustment at vanous points in the total fabnc In whtch case, as Rorty is quick to remark, one can be as `realise as one likes about ob jects, data, physical stimuh, and so forth, while still denymg that one's beliefs are fixed — or one's range of creative 'redescnptions' in any way limited — by the requirement that they should somehow `correspond to realay'

Thus, for Davidson, Ibleliefs are true or false, but they represent nothing It is good to be nd of representations, and with them the correspondence theory of truth, for it is thinking that there are representations that engenders thoughts of relativism' 42 Ali that is needed in order to shrug off the relanvist challenge is a simple recognition that

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252 C:, stopher Noms

the problem it raised was a false problem ali along, one that took nse from the Cartesian idea — the bugbear of epistemology ever smce — that the only kmd of knowledge secure from doubt was the kind arnved at by somehow at- taming accurate mental `representations' of an objective, mind-independent world The best way out of this false di- lemma, so Davidson believes, is to drop that whole theory of knowledge and truth in favour of a thoroughly naturalized theory which requires nothing more of vendical beliefs than that (1) they are assigned some appropnate causal genesis, and (2) they fit in well enough with the totality of our likewise physically prompted (but always revisable since underdetermmed) beliefs about the world at any given time 'This wili in turn have the double advantage of bringing epistemology more alto lime with the methods of the physical sciences and calling a halt to ali those pointless

`metaphysical' disputes about truth, knowledge, representa- non, relativism, realism, ann-realism, and the rest In short, it will teach us to stop worrying about whether our own (or other people's) beliefs are reliably 'In touch with the world' since there is just no way — on the physicalist/holistic account — that we or they could be so massively in error as to lose touch eaher with the world or with each other 4-3 This should put an end not only to sceptical and relativist arguments but also to Kuhnian talk of paradigm-incommensurability and Quinean talk about the problems of 'radical translanon' across disparate ontologies or conceptual schemes What takes their place is the simple point — to paraphrase Madonna — that we are ali in the end physical creatures who live in a material world And this argument is supposedly an adequate cure for hypenn- duced Cartesian doubts concerning the very possibilay of knowing whether or not our ideas `correspond' to this or that item of realay

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Treadzng Water zn Neurath's Shzp 253

However, as I have said, there is not much support for any version of commonsense or scientific realism In an argument that takes so reductive a view of our epistemological condition, or our capacity for acquinng vendical behefs through mere exposure to the range of physical stimuli that bombard us from one moment to the next Indeed, if there is a candidate for the fourth — and hopefully the last — dogma of empinctsm, a is Davidson's icica that one can avoid ali those old sceptical-relativist problems simply by dumping the third dogma (i e, the scheme/content dualism) and adopting a causal theory of behef-acquisition which entalis nothing more than the behever's haba of re- sponding in certain predictable ways to certain kinds of physical snmulus This is why Rorty can treat Davidson as a more than half-way convert to his own strong- descriptivist viewpoint, despae Davidson's occasional lapses into retrograde talk of truth-as-correspondence, realay as that which decides the issue between true and false behefs, or other such onose `metaphysicar ideas For if you just put together the two main Quinean components in Davidson's thought — his physicalist account of belief-acquisition and his holistic theory of truth, meaning and interpretation — then what comes out is a persuasive argument against that whole une of epistemological or representation.alist thought

The following passage is a good example of the way that Rorty talks Davidson around to dropping those regressive (= reahst) behefs and adopting a sensible (= pragmatist) view of the vanous issues — or non-issues — concerned Davidson', he wraes,

has no parti przs In favor of physics, and does not thmk that it, or any natural science, can provide a skyhook — something winch might hft us out of our behefs to a standpomt from which we glimpse the relanons of those

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254 Christopher Norns behefs to reahty Rather, he takes us to be in touch with reahty in ali areas of culture — ethics as well as physics, literary crincism as well as biology — In a sense of `in touch with' which does not mean `representing reasonably and accurately' but simply `caused by and causing' ⁴⁴

This passage can best be read alongside the other lengthy extract (from Rorty's essay `Texts and Lumps') which I ated several pages above His main point there was to exploit the full resonance of Davidson's argument that `causation is not under a description, but explanation is' 45 This he took to mean — by perrrussible extension — that although 'there is such a thing as brute physical resistance' [e g, the light-waves impinging on Galdeo's eyeball], nevertheless there is absolutely no way — on Davidson's account — of (transferring this nonlinguistic brutality to fctcts, to tine

truth of sentences' '6 For facts, after ali, are not objects or entales existmg out there in the world, and avadable for inspection in order to ensure that our various statements or beliefs somehow `correspond' to them Rather, they are

themseives items of belief that may take the form of statements, propositions, attitudes, propensmes, assenting or dissenting disposmons, etc They can ali lay ciam to factual warrant but cannot — on pam of manifest circularity

— be compared with or held up agamst 'the facts' as if these latter somehow belonged to a separate realm of (objective, real-world, mind-independent) truth

Hence Rorty's daim that the realist in.junction `we must have respect for facts' amounts to no more than the Witt- gen.steiman thesis that `we must, if we are to play a certam language game, play by the rules' Hence also his kindred (Davidson-derived) argument that 'to say that we must have respect for unmediated causal forces is pointless' For the causal forces, no less than the facts, are always already under a description by the time that they come to figure In

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Treadmg Water in Neurath's Slup 255

our vanous language-games, hypotheses, theones, conceptual schemes, or whatever Moreover, this argument can be pushed right back to the levei of our 'basic' perceptual data, j ust so long as there remam the yet more basic (Quine- Davidson) appeal to a stage of purely physical stimulto- response where we must be In touch with those 'familiar objects' whose afines — to repeat — are what 'render our sentences and opirnons true or false'

3. Figleaf Reabsm

Now there is — I submit — something very odd about a theory (Davidson's) which can make such a poli-a of claiming to restore 'unmediated touch' between beliefs and world while also giving warrant for the claim that, since everythmg is under some descnption or other as soon as it enters our ken, therefore we should have no truck wah talk about `unmediated causal forces' This oddity is ali the more striking in view of Davidson's causal acount of knowledge and belief-attribution, an account whose chief

\Tatue — as he sees a — is to cut out the icica of conceptual schemes or anything else that is thought of as `mechating' between word and world, or beliefs and objects-of-belief Indeed, Davidson will later go so far as to suggest that there is 'no such dung as a language', at least if by 'language' is meant the sort of thmg that philosophers often have In mmd when they raise problems about meanmg, representation, or the problem of translating or interpret- a-1g across different cultural-linguistic contexts 48 The causal account is supposed to put an end to such wornes by simply pointing out that ali language-users are demzens of the same physical world, disposed to respond to certam stimuli In certam (mostly appropnate) ways, and hence not prone to be 'massively in error' concerning that world or con-

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256 Chnstopher Norns

cerning each others' world-related meanings and beliefs However there is there an obvious difficulty here if we also recall Davidson's point that everything is under some descnption or interpretation as soon as we encounter it, 'causal forces' included For it is this that gives Rorty his handle for arguing — with due warrant from Davidson — that 'facts are hybnd entales', and hence that 'the causes of the assertibility of sentences include both physical stimuli and our antecedent choice of response to such stimuli' But rt is still hard to see how any such `choice' could possibly enter the picture, given that the physicalist theory requires a direct (`unmediated') causal link between objects or events in the ambient world and the vanous, more or less predictable reactions displayed by sentient creatures with the right sort of hardwired snmulus-response repertoire

This is why Rorty can claim to be a `realist' In the only sense that matters, i e, in acknowledging 'the pressure of light waves on Gahleo's eyeball' or of 'the stone on Dr Johnson's boot' But it is also why he can turn that ac-

knowledgement around and make rt the merest of token concessions (in order to head off the charge of out-and-out idealism) while none the less maintaining a strong anu- realist line with regard to everything bar the existence of a noumenal `reality' which is under no particular description, and which therefore scarcely affects the issue either way Here again Rorty's strategy is one that exploits the am- bivalence of sense-data language This language can be bent, according to context, in either of two directions, both of which are needed if the strategy is to look at all plausible, but each of which undermines the other if its implications are examined more closely Thus in order for epistemology to be 'naturalized' — or treated (on Quine's prescription) as fully continuous with the methods of the physical sciences — one must construe such talk in a strong

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Treadzng W ater zn Neurath's Ship 257

causal-determinist sense which leaves no room for vanant 'responses' to the same physical `stimulus' In which case a datum is indeed just that — like the che irresistibly hating the blank, in Rorty's apt metaphor — and a can make no sense to think of human knowers as having any leeway for interpretative (or indeed rational) choice in the matter On this account causalrty is preserved, along with a certain (albeit highly reductionist) form of epistemic realism But more often, especially In Kuhn's case, what is assumed to be `given' at the sense-data levei is a mixture of incoming physical stimuli and dispositions to interpret those stimuli according to vanous perceptual frames, ontological com- mttments, preexistent theoretical behefs, etc

So it is that Kuhn — following Quine — can manage to hold this exceptionally tncky balance, on the one hand (when challenged) professing an outlook of sturdy commonsense realism, while on the other espousing a doctnne of full-fledged epistemic relativism " For that doctnne must be construed in such hohstic terms tf we are to take Kuhn and Quine at their word when they push right through with the relativist argument to the point where it extends ali the way from the logical 'core' to the empincal

`periphery' of behefs held true at any given time But in that case clearly something has to go either the causal theory of belief-acquisition or the relanvist idea that any

`stimulf or 'data' encountered in the process of acquinng beliefs are always subject to prior `choice' as regards their vendical content or their Impact on the range of currently accredited truth-claims, theones, observational protocols, and so forth In so far as philosophers try to have a both ways they can only be trading — conscously or not — on the kind of ambiguity that typically attaches to sense-data language For otherwise there is j ust no way that the physicalist theory can be joined to the opposite extreme of a

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258 Christopher Norris relativist doctrine that must reach right down to the levei of casual `stimult' and 'data' if tt is gomg to support such extravagant claims for the ground-up revisabihty of ali our most basic items of belief But the case falis apart under closer scrutiny since those claims require that the stimuli themselves are alwavs already under some description or open to various (context-dependent or belief-related) construais Thus the Quine-Kuhn argument for ontological relativity completely undermmes the Quine-Kuhn argument for treating our beliefs as reliably produced (and hence as reliably knowledge-conducive) so long as they result from the right kind of causal interaction with the world

Nor is there much help to be had from Davidson's hope- ful way of avoiding relativism, that is, by rejecting the scheme/content dichtotomy and hence regaming

ùnmediated' touch with those objects and events whose Impact on our nerve-ends (and the rest of our cognitive apparatus) is sufficient to render our beliefs true or false For this idea very easily converts — as we have seen — from a robust-sounding theory of causal realism to a variant on the old empiricist theme according to which sense-data are the sole means of access to èxternal' reality And so the way is reopened for relativists (or Rorty-type pragmatists) to claim that it makes no difference what we happen to thmk concerning the realist versus antireahst issue Ali we need do is take Davidson's lead and give up not only conceptual- scheme talk but that whole èpistemologicar way of thinking that has plagued philosophy from Descartes down From this point of view, 'it is no truer that "atoms are what they are because we use 'ator& as we do" than that "we use

`atom' as we do because atoms are as they are" Both of these daims, the antirepresentationalist says, are entirely empty Both are pseudo-explanations' 51 In other words we

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Treadtrig Water ia Neurath's Ship 259

can opt right out of the realist/antirealist debate simply by refusing to play that pancular verbal game Thus it is no more the case that reality depends on the language we use to desenhe a than that our language depends for its meaning or truth-content on the fact of its somehow

`corresponding' with a pnstine, as-yet undescribed reality The pragmatist will wisely avoid both options since the one leads on to a linguistified version of old-style Berkeleian idealism while the other ends up in the circular predica- ment of ali such correspondence-theones That is to say, leaves us with the problem of finding something factual but nort-linguistic to which our statements may be said to correspond, or again, of explaining what could possibly count as an `adequate' or `accurate' match between words and world Much better Rorty thinks — that we should give up this hopeless endeavour and adopt the sensible pragmatist position that nothing depends on our getting things right in the representationalist sense

However this position has problems of its own, as becomes evident in the following passage where Rorty elabo- rates on the non-issue (as he sees it) between realism and anti-realism

The reason why physiasts have come to use the word

`atom' as we do is that there really are atoms out there which have caused themselves to be represented more or less acccurately — caused us to have words which refer to them and to engage in the social pracnce called microstructural physical explanation The reason whv such explana- non meets with more success than, say, astrological expia- nation, is just that there are no planetary mfluences out there, whereas there really are atoms our there 5'

The first thing one notes about this passage is Rorty's cunous relapse tnto just the kind of `representationalise

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260 - Christopher Norris thinking that he had earlier — a couple of sentences back

— advised us to abjure altogether Thus the causal theory of belief-acquisition (as concerns the existence of real-world entales like atoms) is here linked up with a further requirement that the objects in question be `represented more or less accurately' For otherwise — so the argument seems to imply — our behefs might pass the physicalist test of being tnggered by this or that sensory input, and yet turn out to be largely or wholly mistaken with regard to what kinds of object we suppose to have tnggered that response Hence Rorty's distinction between atornic physics and astrology, smce the fact of observmg some particular planetary conjunction is presumably enough to ehet a response (a physically-induced or causally explicable response) in one who is disposed to credit such things, though we wouldn't want say that this was enough to es- tablish astrology as a reputable scence In the case of atoms and subatomic particles, conversely, their existence has been borne out by a whole range of causal stimuli — from observations of Brownian motion or tracks in a cloud chamber to the latest high-resolunon electron microscopes

— and also by their playmg a central (indeed an indispen- sable) role in our current best theones of subatomic physics, molecular biology, and so forth 53 So one can have no quarrel with Rorty's ontological-realist clann that there

`really are atoms out there', and that this what distm- guishes talk about atoms from talk about planetary influ- ences

However it is questionable whether Rorty is entitled to assert that dali-11, given his belief — so vigorously canvassed elsewhere — that there is j ust no point to the endless dis- pute between realists and anti-realists, since everthing (atoms presumably induded) is already under some descrip- non or other, and we are thus never in a position to check

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Treadtng Water ui Neurath's Ship 261

the truth of our vanous observation-statements, scientific theones, ontological commaments, etc This belief shows through in the above-caed passage when Rorty moves across — within a single sentence — from the idea of atoms as having `caused us to have the words which refer to them' to the idea of atoms as causing us to engage 'In the social practice called microstructural physical explanation' Out of context the sentence might be taken to endorse a strong causal-realist argument of the type promoted on the one hand by logicians and philosophers of language such as Knpke, Donnellan, and the early Putnam", and on the other by philosophers of science including David Arm- strong, Richard Boyd, and Wesley Salmon 55 That is to say, a would treat a term like `atom' as picking out just that kind of entay which was first referred to (albea in purely speculative fashion) by the ancient atomists, and then — much later — made an object of increasingly precise theoretical and observational knowledge by scientists from Dal- ton to Rutherford and Bohr 56 On this account, moreover, rt is the case not only that atoms 'cause us to have words which refer to them', but also that their existence explains and justifies the 'the social practice called microstructural physical explanation' However, when the passage from Rorty is put back into context then it turns out not to bear anything like such a causal-realist construal For he makes it very clear that this whole line of thought — whether in philosophy of language (Knpke) or philosophy of science (Boyd) — is in his view just a throwback to old 'metaphysical' ideas such those of natural kinds, truth-as- correspondence, or scientific knowledge as that which en- ables us to `cut nature at the joints'

Thus a is very much 'the social practice called microstructural physical explanation' that Rorty wishes to emphasise, rather than any realist notion that such a `practice' is prop-

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262 Christopher Norris

erly or uniquely suited to pick out the particular (i e, microstructural) features, properties, or attributes which make it the right sort of science for that sort of job Rather, as he urges in rrexts and Lumps', there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't mix disciplines to our hearts' content and look (say) to literary theory for new descriptions in subatomic physics, or to subatomic physics for a new range of metaphors to enliven the discourse of cultural anthro- pology, or to the language of molecular biology as just what is needed to revolutionize thinking in other — supposedly unrelated — fields of study For those fields are marked out not so much by their appropriate objects or methods of enquiry but rather by the currently-prevaihng division of intellectual labour Moreover, since conserva- tism tends to rule in such matters, the best hope of moving things along is to switch descriptions or metaphors as often as possible and reject any putative object-language that makes some clann to descriptive accuracy or causal- explanatory truth Nothing could more clearly illustrate the fact that one can be a `realise about objects and beliefs in the sense recommended by Rorty while none the less denying that objects are in way characterized — or beliefs in any way constramed — by real-world properties (such as the microstructural attributes of atoms) that make some descriptions scientifically valid and others scientifically false

One further passage from Rorty on the same topic may help to bring out both the strams In his argument and the extent to which that argument exploits ambiguities or re- gions of fuzzy definition in the texts of those (chiefly Quine and Davidson) whom he cites in this connection 'The an- tirepresentationahse, he writes,

is quite willing to grant that our language, hke our boches,